Miesięczne archiwum: Wrzesień 2017

Vistula Group S.A. is a company listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. It specializes in the design, manufacture and distribution of men’s and women’s clothing. Due to the dynamic development, Vistula Group S.A. successively develops its e-commerce activities. Cooperation with i-systems has resulted in new dedicated sales platforms for Vistula and Wólczanka. The project also included implementation of a new e-commerce system for W.KRUK, the oldest jewelry brand in Poland, managed directly by W.KRUK S.A. – a part of the Vistula Group S.A. Capital Group. The i-systems company is responsible for all technological works.

Business analysis

The scale of the project and its level of advancement made it necessary to start work from business analysis. This particular type of examination of the current IT architecture has identified key processes, actors, and areas for the company. It also determined points which are worth to develop in order to achieve even better business results. The result was a document that laid the foundation for the implementation of all three systems. This stage took i-systems analysts team a month of work.

– The analysis showed the possibilities of the new system and defined a preliminary work schedule. At the same time it was flexible enough to correct a plan, for example by adding new options at the stage of implementation. It is important to stay open for new options during such large implementations – says Aneta Kazanowska, e-commerce Manager at Vistula Group S.A.

Effective implementation process

Development works started immediately after the business analysis stage. A team dedicated to the project was created, which included people responsible for each area (analysis, UX, frontend, price policy, integration, import, omnichannel solutions, etc.). The number of the team members was flexible throughout the whole process. All the design and implementation works for three brands were made in less than three months and ended according to the schedule. The new system for the company was launched in three stages. The first online store to be launched was Wólczanka, then Vistula, and the last one was e-commerce system for W.KRUK.

– It is one of the largest e-commerce implementations in Poland, which took such a small amount of time. It is worth appreciating the involvement of the customer’s team in the project – comments Marek Pawlak, Project Manager at i-systems.

Omnichannel solutions

The Vistula Group has a rapidly growing network of stationary stores. It currently has 370 showrooms, with a total sales area of 30.9 thousand sqm. (including 118 Vistula stores, 116 Wólczanka stores). W.KRUK jewelry chain has 106 boutiques. Therefore, the implementation of multichannel solutions was immediately taken into account. These are for instance: the ability to check online the availability of products in the store, the ability to order home delivery products while shopping at a stationary store, a consistent customer loyalty program – regardless of the place of purchase, or advanced inventory management.

New systems in the long-term perspective

Immediately after the launch of the e-commerce system, the Vistula Group, W.KRUK and i-systems signed agreements for further development. The agreements cover Service Level Agreement, dedicated cloud infrastructure, and post-implementation support.

– The first stage of the new version of e-commerce system in W.KRUK is already behind us. Now it is time for the development of the systems. We have a lot of interesting ideas, which we plan to enforce – comments Bartłomiej Twardosz, e-commerce Manager at W. KRUK.

More details about the implementation will be described in the nearest future in the form of a case study.

Continuous Integration is one of the twelve practices of Extreme Programming, applied during software development. It is a practice of merging the results of the development team’s work to the main repository. For modern e-commerce systems, it means a constant improvement of software and continuous development. Providing customers with new features and system updates more frequently is key to achieving competitive advantage.

Integration of subsequent code changes should occur at least once a day. Next, integrated versions of the code are covered by automatic tests, and then, after validation, they are implemented into the customer system. The main purpose of continuous integration is to increase team members’ efficiency because they have constant access to the current progress of work. CI also facilitates the prevention of possible errors. For customers, it means constant access to the current software version.

Process of Continuous Integration

All changes introduced to the repository by developers are tested automatically. First, unit tests are performed, that is, the correctness of code is checked. It is followed by code compilation process, the so called build, on which acceptance tests are performed. If errors are detected, the system immediately informs the relevant people assigned to the project. If the tests are successful, the changes are prepared for deployment and become candidates for introduction into the base version of the software.

The advantages of CI

Continuous integration has a lot of advantages. Firstly, the customer has always access to the latest version of the software. Secondly, the efficiency is increased by combining the development team’s work on specific projects, resulting in a significant saving of man-hours. CI also facilitates detection of possible errors and thus – quicker response to them. Also, when there is a need to withdraw changes previously made to the system, it ensures the security of the database.

Work on Continuous Integration is a part of a long-term vision of i-systems software development, which aims to systematically improve the quality of delivered solutions.